MY RESEARCH
Publications
[1] Li, H. & Tong, X. (2023). When Does Female Leadership Advantage Exist? Evidence from SOEs in China. Corporate Governance: An International Review,1–26. https://doi.org/10.1111/corg.12510
[2] Tong, X. (2022). Confidence Herding Under Market Distress. International Journal of Business and Economics, 7 (2), 112-128.
[3] Tong, X., & Kunkel., R. A. (2022) China’s CEO Pay Reform: An Analysis of the Financial Impact on Central State-Owned Enterprises. Journal of Finance Issues, 20 (1), 72-80.
[4] Tong, X., & Wang, B. (2015). The Cointegration Relationship Between Insurance Investment and China’s Macroeconomic Variables: An Empirical Research Based on Time Series Analysis. The Business & Management Review, 7 (1), 479-484.
[5] Tong, X., & Wang, B. (2012). The Impact of Trade in Non-insurance Financial Services on China’s Economic Growth Since Joining the WTO for Ten Years: An Empirical Study Based on Grey Incidence Analysis. China Securities and Futures, 3, 212-213.
Research Projects
MY RESEARCH
[1] “Does Social Communication Impact Investor Survival in the Market?” (with Alex Preda, Andrew McFaull & Raymond So; working paper)
We analyze the effects of social communication on investor survivorship in the foreign exchange market. Previous studies on social communication have emphasized its causal role with respect to market entry, while survivorship studies have overwhelmingly highlighted the role played by psychological and career-related factors in the investors’ decision to quit the market or not. Using a proprietary dataset covering 1.1 million observations for 4,731 traders over an 18-month period, we reveal the important role of social communication in influencing traders’ decisions to stay in the foreign exchange market. We find that traders who actively use communication tend to be 17% to 30% less likely to quit trading. Our results also identify a positive Granger-causal relationship between social communication and the probability of survival. Our results are robust when compared to alternative measures of social communication and different sets of control variables. We contribute to the survivorship literature by drawing attention to the role played by social communication with respect to the decision to stay in the market.
JOB MARKET PAPER
[2] “Social Communication and Return Synchronicity: Evidence from FX Retail Traders” (with Alex Preda; under review)
This paper studies the role of social communication in the return synchronicity of retail traders on a social trading platform (STP). I show that the synchronicity of retail traders’ returns is positively impacted by online social communication, especially by social activity leaders. I find that discussion participants in each online discussion topic exhibit significantly positive chat-level return synchronicity. However, I find little evidence that the chat-level return synchronicity of traders in discussion groups can be attributed to chat-level characteristics, such as the number of participants, the number of comments, and the number of likes. Overall, the evidence suggests that social communication reduces the level of disagreement among retail traders through the information content of online discussions. This is reflected in the fact that when there is more social communication online, there is a higher level of return synchronicity among traders. The evidence empirically supports the social finance theory by showing that social communication alters retail traders’ behavior.
MY RESEARCH
[3] “Do FX Retail Traders Really Make Money?” (with Alex Preda; working paper)
I investigate whether foreign exchange (FX) retail traders make money and possess certain financial / profitability skills. I extend the empirical findings in Abbey & Doukas (2015) by using a comprehensive dataset in FX retail trading to address potential data limitation concerns. I find that FX retail traders on average lose money as opposed to make money. Moreover, I show that retail traders’ trading activities are negatively associated with trading performance. The evidence supports the overconfidence hypothesis of retail trading in the FX market, which is consistent with the insights in equity retail trading (e.g., Barber & Odean (2000)). This paper adds to the on-going debates on the profitability of FX retail trading by empirically providing a more accurate estimation of FX retail traders’ skills under a four-factor model.
FEATURED RESEARCH
[4] “When Does Female Leadership Advantage Exist? Evidence from SOEs in China” (with Hanchen Li; accepted by Corporate Governance: An International Review)
We draw insights from literature on psychology and leadership, and we extend the literature on the female leadership advantage. We exploit a powerful setting in the context of China, where there is a sufficient presence of state-owned enterprises (SOEs) and female CEO leadership. We show evidence that female CEOs outperform male CEOs in terms of firm performance when interacting with government ownership. We find that the improved firm performance by female CEOs is attributed to the increased profitability and operating efficiency. The magnitude of this gender effect is much bigger in central state-owned enterprises (CSOEs) than in local state-owned enterprises (LSOEs). Our results are consistent with the explanations that (1) female CEOs in SOEs have better access to political resources due to their better communication skills; (2) female CEOs better adapt to the mitigated turnover-firm performance relationship (less pressure) in SOEs; (3) female CEOs are more likely to explore their management skills in a more secured and a less pressured work environment provided by SOEs. The results are robust to additional tests that mitigate the sample selection bias and other endogeneity concerns. These results are relevant to the strategic decision-making of CEOs, boards of directors, and policy makers.
MY RESEARCH
[5] “Do All CEO Pay Regulations Backfire? Evidence from China” (with Weijie Wang & Yaowu Liu; under review)
We study and compare the effects of three CEO compensation restricting policies issued by the Chinese government in 2009, 2012, and 2015. These policies targeted state-owned enterprises (SOEs), especially central state-owned enterprises (CSOEs). Using these policies as natural experiments, we investigate how their effects differ on CEO compensation, firm performance, and two known performance-decreasing mechanisms (perk consumption and tunneling activities). We show that restricting CEO pay does not necessarily backfire in term of deteriorating firm performance. This non-decreasing firm performance can be achieved by restricting perk consumption and tunneling activities while introducing CEO pay restrictions.
